


Ghosts in the Machine

by rocknlobster



Category: Foreigner Series - C. J. Cherryh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-18
Updated: 2015-12-18
Packaged: 2018-05-07 09:32:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5451839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rocknlobster/pseuds/rocknlobster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bren slips back and forth between memory, dream, and reality. (Set mainly between <i>Foreigner</i> and <i>Invader</i>.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ghosts in the Machine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [azurelunatic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/azurelunatic/gifts).



Bren was exhausted.

Consciousness hovered, in and out, and he could tell there were things on the other side of the pain—in his shoulder, in other places—and if only the pain would stop for a moment, he would remember them.

He remembered explosions: fire, stone, earth, shattering the morning countryside.

He was riding in the rain; it was grey daylight.

He was standing, barely standing, on Ilisidi's windy balcony, watching the first hints of light reach up beyond the mountains, listening to ghost bells tolling from the lake.

He was on the lake, in a sinking vessel, and another ship was approaching, a man reaching out and offering a hand. He thought about taking the hand but it faded, everything faded, until the spray from the lake became the rain.

_"It's the hour for ghosts. Do you believe in them?"_

Jago's eyes, her face close to his as he huddled near the fire, under enough blankets to pitch an atevi-sized tent. Jago's patient curiosity, snapped. _"Shut the hell up, nadi."_ Jago, hitting him in the rain among the mecheiti.

He kept fading back and forth from the grey rain to the middle of the lake, to a cold and clear mountain slope with a blue sky and whistling wind.

Or was it the whistling of bombs?

Or was it Jago? _"I've never betrayed you. I will_ not _, Bren-ji."_

Were the hands he felt hers, shaking his shoulders? Or the faceless guard, nearly breaking his wrist? Did a bruise change depending on the intention of the one who created it? Bruises of loyalty, of betrayal, of manipulation and deceit.

"Now Mr. Cameron, in a few moments you will be feeling very sleepy. Your limbs may feel heavy...."

That's right; he was back on Mospheira. That was Mosphei'. He risked opening one eye and was met with bright lights, surgical setting. Not on the mainland anymore. That's right; he flew back right after he arrived in Shejidan.

Things were getting heavy.

Bren slowly began to feel as though his consciousness were decoupling, like a train engine, and chugging far, far into the past. 

* * *

He was standing on a craggy hillside overlooking Malguri off in the distance. It was evening, and the sun was behind the fortress, streaking rays of light and color like a painted halo. In front of him, two unfamiliar atevi crouched behind a large boulder, conferring urgently. They paid no attention to him, even when he stepped closer to better hear what they were saying.

"The aiji of Tadiiri looks forward to our mutually beneficial association," said the taller of the two men.

The wheels in Bren's head started turning. Tadiiri, the Sister fortress. It was long destroyed. But his attempts to understand distracted him from the conversation.

"Just get the aiji from Malguri to the rendezvous point," the man had said. "Leave the rest to us."

"Yes," the other man said. "The aiji of Malguri will send a gift to Tadiiri: wine, for the whole court. When that arrives, you will know my advice has been accepted, and the next day expect the aiji at the appointed place and time."

"Tadiiri thanks you, brother," said the tall man.

Bren staggered backward as though he had been hit. _No_ , he wanted to say, _the wine is poisoned!_ But even if they could hear his voice, how could he judge what was the right course of action? As though the last week were not proof enough that he did not understand atevi wiring and atevi political necessity in a gut-level way. This was the past, and _biichi'ji_ was not a concern to these men. No finesse in war.

Whatever the complicated web of _man'chi_ was between these two, Bren knew the end of this story. The tall man would never get the opportunity he sought. The wine would poison them all, and Malguri would take Tadiiri's cannon, and put them by their front door. Was the second man double-crossing his brother? Or was he genuine, but being used and double-crossed by the aiji of Malguri?

He really must request a copy of _Annals of Maidingi_ , Bren thought. Even in the time of cannon and armor and battles, some aijiin solved problems not with banners flying on the hillsides but with secret rendezvous and double-crossing.

 _But some things do change_ , Bren mused. He was fairly sure that even after such a betrayal as the paidhi's kidnap and torture, Tabini would not poison Brominandi's entire household. It lacked finesse.

He walked away, heading downhill toward the lake. The pathless hills should have hindered him, but he found himself crossing the distance at the speed of an easy run on mecheiti, the land moving past him as the dark deepened.

The lake was beautiful at night. A mist gathered, slowly, far from shore, and as the night progressed it crept stealthily closer to shore. By the time Bren stood with the lake water lapping over the toes of his boots, the fog blanketed everything in sight, and the gently lapping water was the only sound breaking the thick silence.

He threw his head back and looked up at the sky. The fog hugged the ground, and did not obstruct his view of the stars. He could name some of the stars and constellations; others were obstructed by the bright light of the moon. It was cold, and the stars told him that very soon he would see the first fingers of dawn reaching past the lowest clefts in the mountains.

Suddenly, a wind approached him from the lake, blowing the fog into machimi shadow dancers, flickering and filmy in the pale light of the moon. He heard the sound of a bell, carried to him on the wind from far out in the lake. It tolled three times, and then Bren rubbed his eyes and took a step back, thinking his eyes must be deceived.

As the wind billowed, the shallows of the lake began to rise and join with the fog, swirling into the shape, the very distinct and recognizable shape, of a ship.

_"It's the hour for ghosts. Do you believe in them?"_

Standing on the prow of the ship, a creature of fog stretched out a hand to him, beckoning him aboard. As he watched, the figure solidified into…Barb. At least, she had Barb's face, her form. _Come with me_ , she seemed to say with her eyes. _There is peace yet to be found. You need love, human connection. Without that, you will wander the earth as a lost soul, a spirit without a home._ She held out her hand to help him aboard.

He took a step forward, and another. There was, surely, some part of his mind that was protesting, saying that this was a dream and there were no such things as ghosts, but such protests were overridden by a sudden, intense _need._

Weeks, months, uncountable hours of navigating the atevi mindset and trying to understand atevi wiring, atevi feelings, atevi needs, and he had still been unable to reach even patient Jago to explain a human emotion, a human need. When he faced his own death—in the basement of Malguri—his mind did not travel to Mospheira, to his family, to Barb. It did not travel to Shejidan, or Taiben, or Tabini. He was on a mountain, and there was snow, and it was cold and silent with a bright blue sky. He was alone.

Some new feeling took root in him, then. The seeds were planted, he now realized, when he first rode Nokhada, when he read and reread the ornate scripts of the history books, when he rode hell for leather after Ilisidi as the snipers shot at them, and actually enjoyed it. Riding Nokhada down the rocky hillside had blurred into skiing down a snowy slope. 

The atevi wiring might preclude his allies ever understanding or feeling what he felt, but when push came to shove it was atevi loyalties that he chose. It was in Ragi that he dreamed, but he faced down his death imagining that he was completely and utterly alone. He wanted Banichi to _like_ him, as a human would, but he faced down his death alone.

The ghostly creature that looked like Barb, standing on a ship of wind and fog, it stretched out its hand to him, whispering to him about human feelings, human needs, telling him that he would never be happy unless he came back to those needs, immersed himself in them.

But now he saw things as they were. Barb was not the true creature of air and water; it was _he_ who was changing into someone, something else. His human needs would always be there; his feelings would grow and change and adapt and still be human. But in the end, he was not fully in either world.

_You will wander the earth as a lost soul, a spirit without a home._

Bren stepped forward another step, and said to the ghost, "There is no rule that says I must choose only one home, one loyalty, one feeling, one culture." As he spoke the words, the entire image of ship and figure faded into nothingness, left him standing knee-deep in the lake surrounded by eddies of fog and silence. He heard the bell once more.

He could sense the roots of this new feeling, inside him, and he could tell it might be a long time before they became clear, before he understood. There was more beneath the surface of his own interface than he had ever known. He understood things, in that moment, about human feelings and atevi feelings, about his own needs and ambitions and where he fit into the world.

He began to shiver violently. It must be the cold of the lake water, he thought, and turned to walk back to shore, only there was no lake, no shore, no moon or stars. He was not even standing; he was lying in a hospital bed and someone was speaking to him in low, urgent tones that it took fully ten or fifteen seconds to realize were in Mosphei'.

"Mr. Cameron," the Foreign Office staffer repeated until Bren managed to focused his eyes on the staffer's face. "How are you feeling, Mr. Cameron?"

Loaded question? He mumbled something neutral, trying to pull together his wits. He had expected Barb to come to the hospital, but he had a niggling feeling about her that he couldn't quite pull into the conscious mind.

"You are needed back in Shejidan. The aiji has demanded…urgent meeting…" The staffer's voice faded in and out. Bren felt as though there were something he was supposed to remember, from a dream he had been having maybe? But he was losing what the staffer was saying.

"We really hope you're up to this…"

Tabini had just given him leave to consult his doctors and convalesce, but now had ordered him to return? And how had Tabini or his staff even managed to communicate this directly to Mospheira? Questions upon questions, but no answers. 

"Thanks," he replied. Courtesy, always the instinctive response. After what he had just been through, it was clear that 'sorry' and 'thank you' were bone-deep instincts. He wasn't sure how he felt about that. He wasn't sure how he felt about anything.

As he boarded the plane back to the mainland, he decided he was sure about one thing, though. Whatever twists and turns were ahead, he knew which way he would run, when the proverbial gunfire started. He was doing what he was supposed to be doing.

He hoped Banichi and Jago would be the ones to meet him at the airport. _Baji-naji_.

**Author's Note:**

> While writing this, I tried to include a number of direct references / easter eggs from _Foreigner_. Happy holidays, and hope you enjoy!


End file.
